THE SCENE: Medieval literature doesn’t get much steamier than this innuendo-laden passage from the Saga of Bosi and Herraud.
THE TEXT: [Bosi] asked if he could get under the bedclothes with her. “What do you want to do here?” she asked. “I want to make my earl hard with you,” said Bogu-Bosi. “What earl is that?” she asked. “He is young and his strength has never come forth, but an earl should be hardened when he is young.”
He gave her a gold ring and got into bed beside her. She asked now where the earl was. He asked her to feel between his legs, but she pulled back her hands and told him to keep his earl and asked, why he would carry such a monster, so hard as a tree. He said that it would soften in the dark hole. She told him to proceed as he wished.
He then set the earl between her legs. The path was not very wide, but he completed the journey. They lay for a while, as they wished, before the young woman asked, whether then earl had taken the hardening. He asked if she would harden it again, and she said that she would like that very much, if it seemed necessary to him.
– The Saga of Bósi and Herraud, 14th Century AD
